The Forsyte Saga

and body were quite different things! Pernicious doctrine, that!
Body and soul could not thus be separated. Free will was the
strength of any tie, and not its weakness. 'I ought to have told
Soames,' he thought, 'that I think him comic. Ah! but he's
tragic, too!'

Was there anything, indeed, more tragic in the world than a
man enslaved by his own possessive instinct, who couldn't see
the sky for it, or even enter fully into what another person felt! 'I must write and warn her,' he thought; 'he's going to have
another try.' And all the way home to Robin Hill he rebelled at
the strength of that duty to his son which prevented him from
posting back to Paris. . . .

But Soames sat long in his chair, the prey of a no less gnawing
ache--a jealous ache, as if it had been revealed to him that this
fellow held precedence of himself, and had spun fresh threads of
resistance to his way out. 'Does that mean that you're against
me?' he had got nothing out of that disingenuous question.
Feminist! Phrasey fellow! 'I mustn't rush things,' he thought. 'I
have some breathing space; he's not going back to Paris, unless
he was lying. I'll let the spring come!' Though how the spring
could serve him, save by adding to his ache, he could not tell.
And gazing down into the street, where figures were passing
from pool to pool of the light from the high lamps, he thought: 'Nothing seems any good--nothing seems worth while. I'm
lonely--that's the trouble.'

He closed his eyes; and at once he seemed to see Irene, in a
dark street below a church--passing, turning her neck so that he
caught the gleam of her eyes and her white forehead under a
little dark hat, which had gold spangles on it and a veil hanging
down behind. He opened his eyes--so vividly he had seen her!
A woman was passing below, but not she! Oh no, there was
nothing there!

CHAPTER XIII
'HERE WE ARE AGAIN!'

IMOGEN'S frocks for her first season exercised the judgment of
her mother and the purse of her grandfather all through the
month of March. With Forsyte tenacity Winifred quested for

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